As Trump plays tough guy, nice guy, a battered yet resilient Iran unleashes a meme war
Donald Trump fancies himself as a straight talker. But he found himself totally straitened in the standoff over the control of the vital Strait of Hormuz as a battered yet resilient Iran toughened its stance on a peace deal.
As Tehran pulled the plug on a second round of Islamabad talks even before they had begun, the master of coercion diplomacy mulled bombing them again, according to a Wall Street Journal insider account.
“…We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY…” he threatened on Truth Social.
But it was he who blinked first hours later announcing an indefinite extension of the ceasefire “upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan” to let the “seriously fractured” government of Iran to “come up with a unified proposal.”
As a stalemate continued through the week with the U.S. Navy seizing an Iranian container ship and Tehran attacking three commercial ships and seizing two of them in an intensifying maritime standoff, Trump started talking tough again.
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“We have total control over the Strait of Hormuz. No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy,” he claimed. “It is ‘Sealed up Tight,’ until such time as Iran is able to make a DEAL!!!”
Trump also ordered the U.S. “Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be (Their naval ships are ALL, 159 of them, at the bottom of the sea!)” laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and ordered stepped-up efforts to clear existing mines “at a tripled up level!”
Despite the mounting global economic consequences, Trump insisted there is “no time pressure” in talks with Iran and “no time frame” on ending the war.
“Please be advised that I am possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!”
Trump team’s on-again, off-again negotiations with Iran have been taking place mostly on social media, NBC News noted tallying 134 published calls between reporters and Trump since the start of the war on Feb. 28.
Tehran debunked many of Trump’s claims like Iran’s enriched uranium would be removed, the Strait of Hormuz jointly demined and never closed again, nuclear enrichment suspended indefinitely, Iran would stop backing its foreign proxies, and no money would be exchanged.
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“The US President made 7 claims in one hour, all 7 of which are false,” Iran retorted. “With these falsehoods, they did not win the war and certainly will not achieve anything in negotiations either.”
Iran’s diplomats around the world too joined a meme war resorting to “shitposting” and “clapback,” with sharp, combative and often sarcastic responses, according to London based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
Following Trump’s expletive-laden threat on X for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe playfully remarked “We’ve lost the keys” in a post that received 6.9 million views and over 93,000 likes.
Other embassy accounts quickly chimed in to take the joke further. The embassy in South Africa commented “Shh… the key’s under the flowerpot. Just open for friends.” The embassy in Bulgaria added, “Open for friends. Epstein’s friends need keys.”
In the first 50 days of the war, posts from Iranian embassy and official accounts collectively gained approximately 900 million views and 22 million likes—a 30-fold increase in likes compared with the preceding 50 days, according to ISD.
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But an unfazed Trump claiming “I’m winning a War, BY A LOT,” accused “the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal” of rooting “for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge!”
And as the Trump administration took the first step toward returning more than $166 billion collected from tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, Trump encouraged companies not to seek tariff refunds.
“It’s brilliant if they don’t do that. If they don’t do that, I’ll remember them,” Trump told CNBC before blasting the Republican Justices for not “stick(ing) together” and giving “the Democrats win after win.”
Calling their “completely ridiculous” tariff decision “a travesty!” he branded it “an unnecessary and expensive slap in the face to the U.S.A., and a giant victory for its opponents.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon released details on its record $1.5 trillion budget request, showing tens of billions will be spent on Trump’s “Golden Fleet” battleship project, the “Golden Dome” missile defense program and other Trump military priorities.
Despite judicial hurdles, Trump also remains obsessed with his pet $400 million ballroom project talking about it on a third of the days so far this year, according to a Washington Post analysis.
And as disapproval of Trump climbed to the highest level of his second term, according to The New York Times polling average, Trump revealed plans to release “interesting” documents relating to UFOs “very, very soon.”
“We found many very interesting documents, I must say, and the first releases will begin very, very soon so you can go out and see if that phenomena is correct,” he said at an event in Phoenix.
Trump did not reveal what was found in a review of government’s UFO files he ordered in February after accusing former President Barack Obama of improperly sharing classified information when Obama said aliens were “real” in a podcast interview. — Perhaps a new site to deport aliens as Uncle Sam calls foreigners — or just bomb!